Mistaken Identity on the Right

TEMECULA, CA — I highly recommend that readers peruse an excellent, light-hearted op-ed that I wrote in the Christmas Eve edition of the Wall Street Journal. No, wait. The author was Robert A. George. Actually, on further reflection, that article was penned by none other than Jason L. Riley.

Please forgive my blunder. This is the first time that I have mixed up yours truly with these two friends of mine. But this is far from the only time that this has happened.

“On some level the mix-ups make sense,” Riley explained in the December 24 Journal.

The three of us are fellow black-conservative political commentors. We live in New York City and socialize in similar circles. As it happens, we are not far apart in age, bald, bespectacled, and share somewhat similar builds.

We also have worked for such center-Right media outlets as Fox News Channel, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post. Indeed, for many years, the three of us simultaneously wrote and broadcast our opinions from the NewsCorp building in Rockefeller Center — the heart and soul of the Murdoch media empire.

And, yes, some people ask me if Rupert Murdoch and Deroy Murdock are related. I tell them that the Murdochs own TV networks. The Murdocks own TV sets.

People frequently think that Jason is Robert George. While some people occasionally swap Robert and me in their minds, I more often get mistaken for Jason.

Every couple of months, someone will come up to me and praise me for yet another outstanding op-ed I have written. I will ask where this person read that scintillating commentary. Imagine my frustration when I hear, “Oh, that was in the Wall Street Journal.” So much for my sparkling prose. Jason Riley wins again.

Sometimes I just smile and say thank you, not unlike the young Ronald Reagan who once met someone who was thrilled to see him on a Hollywood street. “Can I get your autograph?” the fan gushed. “You are my favorite, Ray Milland!” Reagan dutifully took the pen handed to him and signed “Ray Milland.”

Other times I fess up and say, “I think you are confusing me with my friend, Jason Riley.” This immediately triggers embarrassment and profuse apologies. The deep squirms belong to white folks who think that I think that they think that all black people look alike. I quickly take them out of their unwarranted self-humiliation. “Don’t worry. We both shave our heads, wear glasses, and agree more than we disagree. People confuse us all the time.” That puts them at ease.

This phenomenon is broader than one might think.

I asked a question at the Manhattan Institute’s black-tie Wriston Lecture at the Pierre Hotel, roughly 2009. That year’s lecturer was author and linguist John McWhorter, who is openly black. With microphone in hand, I posed my query, hoping that he would expand on a particular point in his remarks or comment on one controversy or another. John began his reply: “Thank you for that question, Jason.” I just rolled my eyes. I reckoned that this confusion is not just a white thing that I wouldn’t understand.

This situation reminds me of a few comments I heard while I had the enormous pleasure of studying overseas at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in fall 1988. I spent the third of my four-semester NYU MBA program on CUHK’s beautiful, hilly campus in the New Territories’ Sha Tin district. I devoted my extracurricular time to exploring this fascinating city-state, then under the protection of Her Royal Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II.

My fellow Westerners and I made fast friends with the warm, gracious, and hospitable Cantonese-Chinese students, faculty, and other locals. However, some of these visitors confessed their difficulty in differentiating our hosts because of their relatively similar appearances.

I never suffer from this look-alike challenge. I have zero difficulty recognizing faces and, if necessary, comparing physiques and mannerisms, to make these distinctions. As for Chinese names, no such luck. Chens, Chongs, Lis, Lius, Wangs, and Wongs swiftly melt into a mysterious linguistic soy sauce.

Ho ho ho!

Back to the Murdock-Riley-George bafflement, I take no offense at any of this. It’s not like people mistake me for Jimmy J.J. Walker. He is a very funny man, but that would not be funny.

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​Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor.